By Paige Gould
Correspondent
Tehran, Iran, on Feb. 28 was met with multiple joint strikes from the United States and Israel, and during this chaos, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former Supreme leader along with 13 other top Iranian defense officials were assassinated as reported by Al Jazeera.
This Sunday was declared the beginning of Operation Epic Fury, according to The White House. The White House stated the mission’s aim is to systematically disarm the Iranian regime and neutralize nuclear threats.
U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social, “[Khamenei] was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”
Among the thousands of Iranian targets, there were more than 165 killed in a small town called Minab. Concurrently, neither the U.S. or Israel have confirmed involvement yet — of striking a Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school, according to Al Jazeera.
Nuclear weapons are the defense mechanisms to protect countries from mass destruction. But which countries need nuclear weaponry was up for debate last summer. On Jun 26., The White House released, "From nuclear regulators to foreign policy experts to members of the intelligence community, every knowledgeable person is in agreement that President Donald J. Trump obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities."
In that article, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir stated, “We significantly damaged the nuclear program, and I can also say that we set it back by years, I repeat, years.”
On Feb. 26, AP News reported that Iran and the U.S. negotiated Tehran’s nuclear program and ended with no deal. The U.S. has gathered a massive fleet of aircraft and warships in the region.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Wednesday that Iran is “always trying to rebuild elements” of its nuclear program, according to AP News. He said that Tehran is not enriching uranium right now, “but they’re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can.”
U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to restart a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
Some Iranian officials have spoken openly about the country’s readiness to produce a bomb if that decision is taken.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic’s CEO a deadline on Feb. 28 to open the company’s artificial intelligence technology for unrestricted military use or risk losing its government contract, according to AP news.
As artificial intelligence encroaches upon military involvement globally, "the Pentagon used artificial intelligence services from Anthropic, including its Claude tools, during its attack on Iran," according to Reuters.
Trump said, "I’m not worried about anything, and things are going well," Al Jazeera reported. “Iran would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks if it weren’t for our strikes against its nuclear facilities, and then this type of attack wouldn’t have been possible.”
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the Israeli force, with the aid of the U.S., will ensure the existence and future of Israel, according to Al Jazeera.
